


Dumb Statues

by pssychotropical



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: M/M, and there's no sexual predator, artsy fartsy guys, for instance nobody's dying, kill your darlings au, mark is already someone else's muse, with major changes, yukhei's a painter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:29:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21862237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pssychotropical/pseuds/pssychotropical
Summary: "One grey evening, he loomed out of the cigarette smoke which filled the whole of the café, the way Venus must have been born out of the sea foam and sunlight, his black hair rippling like the surface of water, body moving in the chiaroscuro and through the rosy glow of lamp shades, the sort of beauty Yukhei had never before laid his eyes on."
Relationships: Kim Jongin | Kai/Mark Lee (NCT), Mark Lee/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas
Comments: 19
Kudos: 77





	Dumb Statues

**Author's Note:**

> In cursive, there are quotations.  
> The story is inspired by "Kill Your Darlings" and "And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks".

Enter two characters: Yukhei and a shorter guy in a grey coat. The setting is a sleazy studio, mostly painted yellowing white, no furniture except for: one desk, one chair and one kitchen cabinet. There is no bed, only a mattress with a ball of messy blanket on top of it. There are sheets of paper lying all around the floor, piles of it here and there, unpacked boxes, some black-and-white drawings, mostly unfinished, glued with clear tape to the white walls. The place can be easily summed up by the view of a half-emptied glass of coca-cola standing by the mattress, bugs crawling to the inside. There are mouse traps set next to it.

The studio is Yukhei's current whereabouts. The guy in the grey coat is his ex-lover, in the vaguest meaning of the word that is possible. His name is Mark and Yukhei remembers things with him are never simple or precise.

"Congratulations," Mark speaks up, and his voice produces other Mark voices to echo off the naked white walls. He means Yukhei's painting and design degree, but he doesn't really congratulate; it's just a filler in the silence between them. Long story short, Yukhei's painting and design degree is one of the reasons they've broken up three years ago. Mark wants to act like it didn't happen.

"Thanks," Yukhei replies, but he really doesn't. Mark didn't congratulate and Yukhei didn't thank; it's all noises in the studio to keep it from being empty.

Mark comes up to that single lonely chair by that single lonely desk and takes a seat, no longer looking in Yukhei's direction. He admires the studio, his narrow eyes taking every detail of it and maybe even more details than Yukhei's aware of. Mark's here because, long story short, Yukhei came back to the city and Mark's his old friend in a very vague way; a fact that can't be denied. He knows some people Yukhei doesn't.

"I like the place," Mark finally says, like it's an evaluation Yukhei has been patiently waiting for. The feeling's back, like three years ago when they were vaguely lovers, vaguely friends. The situation Yukhei remembers well is him waiting for Mark to tell him what to do, how to live, what decisions to make. There's some sexual tension but only leftovers, like a cigarette dying out. It's back because all of other memories are back. Yukhei realises he's expected that Mark would like the place.

The truth is, rather than looking for someone to help boost his career, Yukhei wanted to meet Mark just so that he could see his body in its entirety one more time. Over the course of last three years, he's been trying to draw it but the image of the man escaped his memory, piece by piece. Now he's back. Or Yukhei's back to him. Or they're both back.

Mark watches the room when Yukhei watches his face, locating all the moles that he's forgotten about and therefore couldn't properly place in the drawings. Through the tiny details of the man's face, like the texture of his lips or the exact curve of his eyebrows, he relives the feelings he's had towards the man in the past and which he thinks he no longer has.

When the silence draws out for too long, Yukhei comes closer and stands with his bottom against the kitchen cabinet. He takes a packet of cigarettes from the back pocket of his flannel trousers, and gives one to Mark. Mark expects Yukhei to light it up for him so he does. Then, Yukhei begins, "I've read Kai's novel. I was bored on the train."

"Right," Mark speaks through the cigarette straight in the middle between his two small, thin lips. He's neither impressed by the confession nor annoyed. "Liked it?"

Yukhei takes the cigarette out of his own mouth when he responds. "Yeah, it was fun." Mark nods his head. The novel was a long stream of consciousness cut into pieces and rearranged so that it made little sense overall. Yukhei doesn't remember much of it. He looks at Mark's wrist and the hand that's holding the cigarette. Then he recalls the aim of their meeting. "Do you want to choose which paintings to take? Or can I pick them for you?"

Mark shrugs. The hand that's not holding the cigarette moves to flip through the pile of drawings on the desk. Some of them show pieces of Mark. There are his feet, his ankles, his neck and one ear. Mark blows the smoke out of his nostrils. "Whatever you want. Bring them to me. I'll pop at his place tomorrow."

It's spontaneous when Yukhei asks, "Do you want to go grab a coffee together some time?"

And like reading through those of Yukhei's thoughts that even Yukhei himself isn't aware of, Mark flickers the ashes onto the floor and says, "No need to. We'll see each other at the exhibition."

They don't say anything more. Yukhei goes look for the right paintings. Bugs continue crawling into his glass of coca-cola. Fin of scene one.

The truth is Yukhei met Mark in a very frustrating period of his life. January 1965, he spent his days walking round the city and looking for a face amongst the crowd which would be worthy immortalising oil on canvas. Someone who would be his wonderful discovery, epiphany, his greatest moment d'être kicking off his painting career.

At that time, he didn't have a job, a relationship nor a place he belonged to. He was part of the nameless mass of people who each day went to job interviews and each day spent unemployed, constantly on their way to some other undefined destination. With the months passing in black and white, roving from bar to bar, smoking the cigarettes left unfinished by other people, sitting in cafés and flipping through a few day old newspapers but without actually reading them, Yukhei experienced Mark like a being sent from another universe.

One grey evening, he loomed out of the cigarette smoke which filled the whole of the café, the way Venus must have been born out of the sea foam and sunlight, his black hair rippling like the surface of water, body moving in the chiaroscuro and through the rosy glow of lamp shades, the sort of beauty Yukhei had never before laid his eyes on.

He took a seat at Yukhei's table, without saying a word. He gave a smile, noncommittal. Over the steaming cup of espresso which he brought with himself to the table and through the smoke of Yukhei's cigarette, which he had found already burning in the ashtray, they looked at one another. In that moment, Yukhei felt a lightning-like shock that focused his senses all at once and which made his hands itch to draw. The romantic-looking features of the man's face, like of someone finger-snapped perfect into existence. Petit in stature but seemingly occupying so much space it made Yukhei feel cornered. Small head but surmounting a broad neck, soft eyes but rimmed with dark circles, all of it finished off by a pair of sharp cheekbones.

Yukhei couldn't stop the question that surged to the tip of his tongue. "Can I paint you?"

With the words rushing out of his big lips, out of his control, he was vaguely aware of how ridiculous he must have sounded. A few moments passed and then a pair of dimples appeared in the man's cheeks. With the newly found confidence, Yukhei chuckled and leaned over the table.

"It's not a pick-up line," he announced, but then shook his head. "I guess it could be, but I really mean it that I want to paint you." He outstretched his hand towards the man, "Wong Yukhei."

"A painter?"

"In the making." The moment Yukhei took hold of the man's hand, smaller in size, he made the handshake last in a demanding way. "That's the part where you tell me your name as well."

"Mark Lee."

Only then did Yukhei let go. There was something intriguing about the man's smile. It didn't feel earned; it was simply there, plastered perfect to the pair of pink, chapped lips. Lingering. Daring him.

"I don't have the money to pay my models," Yukhei admitted frankly. "It's because I'm already two months behind with the rent and I haven't been accepted to any job I applied for."

Listening, the man picked up his cup of coffee. "I can do it for free," he agreed and took a sip.

The half a year spent with Mark, he would be constantly drawing, every hour of the day and night, but without ever finishing the portrait of the man and without reaching for a brush.

They met in a casual fashion, Mark joining Yukhei in his daily job-hunting and bar-roving, or Yukhei joining Mark in his morning coffee-sipping, lazy cigarette-smoking at local cafés. As if appearing by Yukhei's side at random and by coincidence walking in the same direction, Mark would be right there, always present. He would open his never-ending notes and continue writing, and Yukhei would sit at the opposite side of the table and look at his face. Sometimes he would scribble Mark's portrait on a napkin or on the edge of a morning newspaper, leaving it to the waiter along with the emptied cups of coffee.

The thing that started between them didn't have an official beginning, just as it wouldn't have an official ending. It seemed as if they naturally blended into each other's lives, appearing there without an invitation and with no expiration date indicated. When Mark stayed overnight in Yukhei's flat, the one over a café, loud every hour of the day, it seemed like an organic progression. Like he's walked in by mistake and forgot to leave.

Back then, Mark used to major in literature and was renting a flat with four other men, all specialising in arts, similar in age and interests, spending the nights quoting artistic manifestos or discussing the latest exhibitions that Yukhei had no idea existed.

You walked through a narrow hall of grey walls, like the entrance into a spaceship, a single bare light bulb flickering over the entrance, through the hall into the living room, through the living room into the kitchen. In the living room, Mark had his corner, a bed, next to it a coffee table piled with books, a pair of glasses on top and two cups with coffee dregs at the bottom. On either side of the coffee table stood an armchair, functioning as a designated place for putting all kinds of Mark's possessions, next to one of the armchairs a wooden hanger holding all of Mark's clothes. The rest of the room was filled with plant pots and ceiling-height bookcases, which were stuffed to the brim, so overloaded there was nothing else you could squeeze in, books on top of books, yellowing, creased, marked or with no names on their spines, one row hidden behind the other, some looking as though they were about to fall down.

Through the living room where Mark lived and where Yukhei came to visit him, the remaining three tenants and their guests would casually walk into the kitchen, leading their own conversations, indifferent to Yukhei's presence or absence, to where he came from or who he was. The smell of coffee or tea, or burned toasts, reached to where Yukhei was kissing Mark on the lips, hand in his black hair during those long, cold evenings.

"What do you think the butterfly is bewildered by?" Mark would ask Yukhei, eyes looking up from the volume of poetry in his hands and towards Yukhei who would be caught red-handed midway through scribbling Mark's chin in the notebook.

"You're distracting," Yukhei would reply, jokingly, and Mark would continue speaking, more to himself than to anyone else, revising the thoughts that were introduced to him during the classes.

"He uses nature as a handy metaphor for describing human relations, you know," and then Mark's flatmates would walk in, ignore them, walk into the kitchen.

Mark had many guests of his own too, and one of them particularly struck Yukhei the first time they met.

For one thing, he seemed much older than an average visitor to the flat, than all the arts students Mark was acquainted with. Dressed in a long coat, underneath it a brown suit with a brooch on the collar, the man stepped into the flat without knocking, his polished leather shoes leaving a trail of muddy steps on the wooden flooring. It was midway through an evening meet-up, the records stacked on top of the gramophone and the strains of Brahms filling the flat, making the discussion just a tad louder than the piano and cellos. The man was standing in the corridor, nothing visible of him at first but the skirts of his coat and the back of his head, framed in the dim light of the corridor. One of the flatmates said, "Angel Boy, someone to see someone," and Mark walked out, dropping his copy of _A Vision_ onto the pile of books standing by the sofa, Yukhei's eyes following his steps.

The music intensified; someone cracked open an inhaler to get the benzedrine strips out of it, planning the high for the night, just the right amount for the sculpture to be sculptured. When Mark came back, the older man was gone. Mark sat back on his spot beside Yukhei, holding a rolled piece of paper with a text typed with a typewriter, stealing a cigarette out of Yukhei's lips.

"What's that?" Yukhei asked, leaning close to Mark for his words to be heard over the classical piece but not by the remaining men. Before Mark replied, Yukhei snatched the paper out of Mark's hand, no opposition. "Pre-Raphaelites? An essay?"

"End of term paper," Mark explained, his mouth and nostrils releasing a cloud of smoke.

"He wrote it for you?"

One of the men, Jaemin, let out a laughter. It was the first time Yukhei had the opportunity to get to know Mark's flatmates closer, warily observing them while drinking his second bottle of pernod. "He always does," Jaemin said, before swallowing the rolled stripes soaked in the drug. He washed them down with alcohol. "Our Angel Boy isn't fond of writing them himself."

Mark shrugged, a mischievous smile toying with the corners of his lips, book back in his hand, as if it was an extension of his body.

"He's a bit of a hooligan, you could say," Jaemin continued speaking, with his wine glass now pointing at Mark. "It's part of the appeal. Our mysterious Angel Boy and his cacoethes."

One midnight, Yukhei was lying in Mark's bed, the room enshrouded in darkness and only the curtainless windows allowing the rectangles of moonlight to seep in. Staring at the ceiling, hands under his head, he listened for the various sounds coming from the other flats of the building: a jazz record being played nearby, a piano lesson a few walls away and a loud argument finished by a slap on the face somewhere above them.

There was no sound of Mark's steps, though, so light against the carpeted floor. Yukhei could recognised the outline of his silhouette in the doorframe of the kitchen only by the flame of a match suddenly appearing on the horizon, lighting up a cigarette in the already smoke-filled room.

Most of the night Mark had devoted to developing a philosophical idea which, as he claimed, had its beginning at a lecture he had attended, conducted by one of his friend's, something about naked self-expression and derangement of the senses. Coming from such lectures, he always seemed agitated, words spilling out of his mouth, which Yukhei could recognise to be someone else's, inspired quotations Mark liked to ponder upon hours after hearing. And then, the closer it got to midnight, the less he would speak: from long tirades to short phrases sipping out, dropping names of authors and works without any connection between them, until eventually he would trail off, become pensively silent.

Yukhei didn't ask who Mark had met with or where he had spent the day, if he had skipped the classes again, like he usually did. Just two months into their relationship, it didn't feel like he had yet earned the right to be informed about Mark's movements, being aware only of those the man himself wanted to share. And so Yukhei was left to wonder. Listening to Mark, watching his chapped lips move, his hands gesture, he would wonder in silence.

The orange glow of the tip of the cigarette approached, behind it Mark's loud sigh. Yukhei felt the bed dip where the man sat down.

"How can you fall asleep here?" Yukhei asked, first question that had come to his mind.

Mark's body stirred with laughter. Yukhei smelled the smoke. "I just don't," Mark replied, sincerely amused. "I lie down and I listen. It can get fascinating."

For a moment, both of them fell silent. The piano lesson had finished. The jazz record continued playing. Something hit the floor loudly, breaking against it with a scream of a woman.

"They fight whenever he gets home from work," Mark went. "One day the guy's going to kill her."

Yukhei didn't comment. "So," he started after a pause, his body momentarily tensing at the subject his mind wanted to approach. "Who's the man writing your essays?"

Mark laughed again, letting out more smoke. His hand reached for the duvet they were sharing, naked legs slipping into the warmth. Yukhei's eyes had been slowly getting accustomed to the darkness, making out the edges of Mark's face, the mess of his hair and the arch of his hunched back. "A friend of mine."

"You've got many of those," Yukhei commented. "Angel Boy?"

Mark chuckled but his voice changed. "Don't call me that." A pause. "Are we going to the bars tomorrow? I have a hunch I'll want to dance."

"With your friends?"

"You still have many of them to meet."

"It's a pleasure."

The cigarette made a glowing arch in the air as Mark quickly changed his position, sitting astride on Yukhei's lap. When he leaned in to kiss Yukhei, the smoke entered Yukhei's lungs.

"Should we be doing this?" he asked, feeling Mark's lips curve into a smile against his cheek.

Something heavy hit the floor once more, on the upper floor. "Nobody's going to hear us."

"Your flatmates?"

Mark shrugged, lips following down Yukhei's jawline. The cigarette ashes must have dropped somewhere on the pillow beside his head. "It's their fault if they come in."

Hand sliding under the duvet, Yukhei discovered that Mark had only his cotton t-shirt on. Yukhei's fingers brushed against Mark's naked buttocks.

One of the things Yukhei was quick to learn after weeks of accompanying Mark to various bars downtown was that no matter where they went and who was the clientèle, Mark always attracted attention. Of both females and males. He had the look that locked gazes and an attitude which said "Try me". Every place they visited, climbing up the staircases and passing through dancing crowds, there were always people to stop him and exchange a few words, people who stole kisses off of Mark's cheeks and from whose mouths Mark stole cigarettes. And whenever Yukhei asked about the identity of those people, Mark would always shrug his shoulders. He would say he didn't remember. Sometimes he would say, "A writer. Not very promising."

Spending the nights with Yukhei, Mark tended to disappear for a span of time impossible to predict, sometimes a few minutes, other times Yukhei could only find him hours later, looking inspired and bubbly. Some occasions, however, Mark would stay by Yukhei's side the whole night.

The bars closed at three am on Saturday nights. Towards midnight, they were seated at an isolated table for two, hidden in the shadow of a wooden staircase, two glasses and an ashtray in front of them, Mark chain-smoking as he always seemed to be. Yukhei didn't have anything to draw with. His hands were itching.

"So what are your plans?" he asked, spontaneously, one bottle of pernod in.

Mark brought his eyes back to their table, tearing them away from the jazz singer on the stage. "For the night? Come back home and have sex so loudly that my flatmates come over to see?"

Amused, Yukhei sniggered, hand holding the glass and stirring the pernod inside of it. Mark's eyes twinkled. "Not for the night. More broadly."

Only then did Mark get it. His face darkened, slightly, just for a moment, before he said, "You mean for the future? Let me think." He pretended to deeply ponder upon the subject. "I'll graduate," he replied at last, licking his lips, then placing a cigarette between them. Yukhei quickly lit it up. "Or maybe not. Maybe I'll drop out next month." Laugh broke from his mouth. "Maybe I'll join the navy with Johnny. You've met Johnny, right?"

"Not yet." Yukhei lit up a cigarette for himself now, taking a drag. "Would you really do it, though?"

Mark shrugged. "I don't think I'm exactly military material," he joked. His eyes watched Yukhei's lips around the cigarette. The smoke blurred the vision of their faces. "What about you? Your plans?"

Yukhei paused. "Find a job? I guess that's it."

This response visibly satisfied Mark, immediately making his face light up. His back straightened. "Just like me. And that's what I love about you. It's this... freedom. We don't need to do anything really."

Yukhei nodded, thinking. In the short silence between them, Mark's eyes drifted back to the singer, his fingers tapping the table to the rhythm, dressed in a black roll neck, a dogtooth tweed coat thrown over his arms. Yukhei scrutinised his face.

"So is there a place for me in your busy plans, Mr Lee?" he asked, continuing the conversation after the break. "Or is against the rules of your bohema freedom?"

Mark's eyes squinted for a moment. He drank the rest of his glass in one slug, throwing his head back. "My rules are there are no rules," he went, placing the glass back on the table, carelessly shoving the ashtray aside.

"Seems to me like you're evading the question."

"Listen. I like what we've got right now."

And that was the first time Yukhei decided to push the conversation further, signal where he wanted to lead the whole discourse. "I like it too," he agreed, cautiously. "But what is it exactly that we've got?"

Mark stood up from the table. "Come dance with me. I want to dance."

Introducing Yukhei to his acquaintances, Mark would always call him a painter, even though technically Yukhei hadn't made his painting début yet. If asked about the movement he belonged to, was he an abstractionist or an impressionist, Mark would always cut in and reply himself, "He's still testing the limits of imagination." His somewhat possessive hand landing on Yukhei's arm, he would go, "Yukhei doesn't want to be contained by a label at this early stage of his career."

That's what he told Johnny too, the first time he and Yukhei met.

"An upcoming painter with no label," Johnny commented, rather amused. He was a well-built man with broad arms and a healthy head of brown hair, middle parted. They were ordering fried eggs with bacon in a nearby restaurant, philharmonic symphony playing on the radio and smoke eddying into the air, above their table.

"Johnny's a poet. Seaman-poet," Mark supplied. It seemed like something Mark cared about in particular: surrounding himself with art related people.

Yukhei, who hadn't yet spoken this morning, not to Johnny, at least, nodded his head docilely. Johnny looked him up and down from where he was seated at the opposite end of the table. They were still waiting for more people to join them.

"So that's who you spent the last night with?" Yukhei asked, finally, and Mark bursted into laughter at a sudden memory of what must have happened.

"We went to see the newly built skyscraper," Johnny explained.

"Why?"

"Mark was drunk and thinking of jumping off. I don't remember that well."

" _Whether I die today or tomorrow is of no importance to me, never has been_ ," Mark added, clearly quoting some writer, a habit he had, endearing, only Yukhei never managed to recognise any of the quotations. He simply sensed them streaming into Mark's speech by the changing tone of the man's voice.

The waitress brought their orders to the table; Johnny thanked in a clearly flirtatious tone and Mark whistled silently the moment she departed.

"Have you been to classes recently?" Johnny asked, knife and fork in his hands, cutting the bacon into pieces, half-smoked cigarette dangling from one corner of his lips. "I was asked to make sure," he added.

"Not recently." Mark sighed theatrically. "I needed a break. Rhyme and meter make me so nauseated. Just like too much decorum."

Feeling excluded from the conversation, once again, Yukhei's hands automatically reached for a newspaper, pencil taken out of the pocket of his shirt. Looking at Mark, leaning against the table and towards Johnny, he would begin quick sketching the shape of the man's sharp jaw.

"You should tell him that," Johnny said. "You haven't spoken to Kai for some time now. Or so I heard from him."

Mark's lips formed a wince, which Yukhei's pencil was fast enough to capture on the edge of the newspaper.

"Maybe he should make a lecture on something that interests me. Maybe then I'll come over."

Johnny clicked with his tongue, visibly irritated. "I know why you're doing this," he responded, just the moment their conversation was about to be cut short by the arrival of two silhouettes.

Hanging on Jaemin's shoulder was a woman soon introduced as a children's-book illustrator, Chaeyoung. Once again, Mark recited the same words, "That's Yukhei. A painter," and the whole conversation began anew, hands shaking and Yukhei smiling politely as Mark talked on his behalf. The waitress refilled their cups with coffee three times. The philharmonic symphony continued playing. And then, at some point during the meeting, when the plates were already empty and the ashtray heaped with cigarette butts, Mark stood up, abruptly cutting through Johnny's monologue about his military experience.

"Me and Yukhei have to go," he announced, his tone of voice implying their departure to be imperative, something they had planned ahead of the breakfast. He proceeded to pull on Yukhei's arm, forcing him to last moment grab the pencil but leave the sketches on the morning newspaper. "Sometimes I'm just so tired of them," Mark would explain later, when he and Yukhei were out of the restaurant, bell ringing behind their backs as the door closed.

"We didn't pay the bill," Yukhei pointed out. He looked at the restaurant while putting his coat on, February wind instantaneously hitting him in the face.

Mark shrugged. "Let's go somewhere."

"Somewhere? I thought you had a plan before you made us leave."

With speedy steps waltzing down the pavement, Mark lit up a cigarette, flame flickering on his face. "You wanted to stay longer? You didn't even talk to them."

"But I enjoyed watching you talk."

Mark laughed, turning his head away. His cheeks were red, possibly owing to the harsh wind. One hand deep in the pocket of his coat, with the other he shakily stabilised the cigarette in his mouth. "I would rather spend the time just the two of us," he told Yukhei.

Three months into their relationship, or however Yukhei was allowed to refer to it in his head, he was invited for the first time to one of the poetical lectures Mark was so fond of attending. Or rather he happened to accompany Mark as the man was already on his way. The most pompous place Yukhei had been to: a two-floor house of the neoclassical style, with polished floors and floral tapestry, well-organised bookcases propped against every wall and the air clouded with the cigarette smoke of all the guests gathered inside.

"It's an orphanage for the artists who haven't flourished yet," Mark explained at the entrance, confidently leading his steps inside, greeting some of the people and others ignoring, his long coat waving down his back.

Following Mark's steps, Yukhei managed to recognise some of the faces amongst the crowd, though unable to connect them to any bars or restaurants in particular, not to mention their artistic professions. There was scarcely any natural light inside the house, owing to the opaque brocaded draperies hiding most of the windows behind them. Only candles and antique beaded lamps illuminated the silhouettes of the guests they passed by, on their way to the main room.

They walked in in the middle of the lecture, momentarily interrupting the man who was conducting it. He looked at the two of them, then looked away, one hand holding a glass of wine, the other a cigarette. It was the same man who had brought the end of term paper and had sometimes visited Mark's flat; Yukhei was able to recognise his posture, his handsome face and the pillowy shape of his lips as they moved while talking. He had a roll neck moulded around his chest and a jacket on top of it, rings shining on his fingers.

"Life is like a circle," he said, his voice low and self-assured.

There were people scattered around the room, on the oxblood red Chesterfield wing back armchairs and the ribbon-carved Chippendale chairs upholstered in red damask, their poses relaxed but faces riveted upon the speaker.

"Whatever you do in it," the man's voice continued, eyes now following Mark's figure who walked between the armchairs to reach a bottle of wine that stood on the mantlepiece, "whichever decision you make, they only get you closer to the beginning. Until you helplessly, inevitably end up on the finish line which is also your start."

Yukhei didn't move any closer, his steps halting at the entrance. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Mark take a glass out of the cabinet and proceed to pour himself wine, only between his moves looking up at the speaker.

"Without realising, you follow your own footsteps, stepping back into the situations you've already been to," the speech continued, "with a delay recognising your actions to be reminiscent of the past, always merely seconds too late not to repeat your own mistakes."

That's how it went on.

At the end of the lecture, as the guests bursted into discussions, names being dropped and works quoted, the man approached Mark and Yukhei, all three of them now standing by the fireplace.

Yukhei expected the usual, "That's Yukhei, he's a painter," leaving Mark's mouth between two lazy puffs on a cigarette, but instead, it was the man who initiated the conversation. Right by Mark's side, he looked noticeably larger in frame but equally self-confident in pose. Gazing at Yukhei in what felt like an inspection, he asked, "So this is Yukhei?" and his handshake felt firm on Yukhei's bigger hand. "Kim Jongin. How did you like my speech?"

Yukhei didn't manage to respond; Mark's words hurried out from between his lips, "Could you leave us alone for a second?"

And only then Yukhei realised that the words were directed at him.

Wandering around the house all by himself now, Yukhei would eventually step into one of the bathrooms upstairs. There were bottles of whisky and martini sitting in the basin, empty glasses on the little shelf below the mirror, ashtrays filled with cigarette butts left on the closed toilet lid. And there was Jaemin, his body sprawled out inside the bathtub, half of his face covered by a gas mask.

Only once sensing Yukhei's curious eyes behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses did he furrow his eyebrows, acknowledging the man's entrance. His clouded eyes gained focus and one lazy hand took the mask off. "You came for this?" His hands holding onto the edges of the bathtub, he forced his body to assume a sitting position.

Yukhei shook his head no. "What is it?"

Jaemin lifted the gas mask, making the tube leading to the gas canister wiggle between Yukhei's feet. "Nitrous oxide," he explained before turning the gas off and putting the mask down, into the bathtub, next to his body dressed in a tailored suit with a white shirt and a waistcoat. "I'm observing the motions of time. Ever read _The Opium Eater_?"

Once again, Yukhei's head signalled that no, he hadn't. Jaemin shrugged his shoulders. He fished a joint out of the pocket of his suit and proceeded to light it up. The smell of cannabis immediately invaded Yukhei's nostrils.

"Hey, Jaemin," he started again, the man's name weirdly unfamiliar on his tongue, like of someone he shouldn't be in touch with. "Sorry about the last time. Didn't intend to wake you up."

Joint between his lips, Jaemin glanced up at him. "You mean me walking in on you having sex with Mark in broad daylight? Traumatic experience," he commented. Unlike the words themselves, his voice came out unconcerned. "Up until this point I always thought Mark only masturbated to his ideal of Baudelaire." When Yukhei made a face like he didn't get it, Jaemin continued, "I'm just joking. I've seen him naked before."

"You have?"

"Not while having sex with him, mind you." He took a break to smoke the joint. "Sometimes he walks around the flat naked. Reading poetry. He likes the attention. Like a little child, when you think of it." Jaemin changed his voice. "Look at me, I read Pound and I want to break the conventions of decorous poetry." Then, his voice went back to normal. "Most of what he says is repetitious anyway. Full of some other poets. And Kai."

"Kai?"

"Kim Jongin. A friend of mine and the guy who writes Mark's college papers. You've already had the pleasure of meeting him." Unwillingly, Yukhei nodded. "It's his house, by the way. I'm saying that because I'm sure Mark hasn't."

"Really impressive place."

"Mark used to live in here."

"Was he one of the adopted artistic orphans?"

Jaemin let out a laugh, cannabis smoke escaping his mouth and dissolving before Yukhei's face. "Have you ever wondered what a new world the gramophone has opened the doors to? If you record the sounds of people screaming and play them in public, you can create an absolute chaos," he said, all of a sudden. From the inside pocket of his suit, he brought out a pen and a small piece of crumpled paper, quickly noting things down.

Yukhei leaned against the tiled wall, wondering how he had even got himself into this. His thoughts inevitably drifted back to the living room where between all the guests and the cigarette smoke Mark looked so comfortable and yet so lost. The look in his eyes when he asked Yukhei to leave. And that man, Kim Jongin.

The door opened and Mark walked in.

"Hi, boys. Having a conversation, are we?" He threw a glance at the empty bottles in the basin, sighing. "Where is all the liquor?" Then he came up to the bathtub, sitting on its edge and quickly taking the joint from between Jaemin's fingers, his pose immediately relaxing as if he had been with them in the bathroom this whole time. Releasing the smoke from the chapped lips, he went, "What's the conversation about. Me?"

Somehow enchanted, Yukhei chuckled. He pointed at the gas canister which stood by the bathtub.

Mark chuckled as well. " _For there is only one great adventure and that is inward towards the self_ ," he quoted, someone Yukhei had no chance of identifying, " _and for that, time nor space nor even deeds matter_."

"You shouldn't listen to him," Mark said, as the two of them were already out of the party, walking on the bridge, each street lamp illuminating their figures and throwing multiple shadows behind their backs. Mark had a bottle of martini still in his hand, from which he took a sip every now and then, his gait jovial and dance-like, coat flapping in the strong wind that ruffled the river. "He's always high. Sometimes barely knows what's going on."

"I've noticed."

Mark giggled. He passed the bottle back to Yukhei and watched him drink. "Jaemin's family is fucking loaded. Grandfather invented a refined version of the adding machine."

"Then why does he live in a roach-ridden flat with you guys?"

"He's always believed that poverty and suffering make the best art. And I agree." He outstretched his hand. Yukhei gave him the bottle. In the weak light of the street lamps, Mark's jet black hair shone in a way that almost blinded Yukhei.

For a while, they walked in silence, Mark first, Yukhei two steps behind him, watching him, carefully, and wondering how so much stubbornness and so many thoughts could swirl in such a petit body of his.

" _I longed for an earthquake_ ," Mark began reciting, out of the blue, his voice drunk with martini, a bit hoarse with the cigarettes and wind, " _for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted the earth to open_. _To swallow everything in one engulfing yawn._ " At this point, his voice turned into a yell. He outstretched his arms and lifted the bottle high up, gaining the attention of a few passers-by, drawing their critical stares all onto himself. Somehow, it made Yukhei laugh. " _I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation_."

Yukhei sped up his steps to place a hand on Mark's shoulder. "I think you're drunk."

"You know what Baudelaire said. You ought to be drunk at all times. With alcohol, with poetry... with love."

"That's who you were quoting?"

Mark threw his head back, laughing. "Give me the cigarette," he said, almost like an order. And Yukhei followed it. "Not him but also a poète maudit. You wouldn't hear of the guy's works because they are banned in the country."

"Then how do you know them?"

Mark smiled, proudly, mischievously. He watched Yukhei take the first drag on their last shared cigarette, before grabbing it and putting into his own mouth. "Copies stolen from the college library. I committed the words to my memory. _I am the germ of a new insanity, a freak dressed in intelligible language, a sob that is buried like a splinter in the quick of the soul_." After that, he trailed off.

They entered the building, a single bulb lighting up the staircase where the electric cables were running unprotected on the walls and the old paint was peeling off, uncovering the bricks beneath it. The wooden stairs creaked under each of Mark's rapid steps, moaning with pain. In front of the door, they came to a halt, and it took Mark a longer moment to search the pockets of his tweed trousers and fish out his set of keys. They stumbled inside.

Immediately in the corridor, entering the perfect darkness that ruled over the flat, Mark's hands landed on Yukhei's chest, pushing him against the closed door, making both of them momentarily worried that it would collapse under the sudden pressure. They started kissing the way Mark always kissed: spontaneously and angrily, same as he recited his favourite poems and passages of prose, at random times of the day and night, cutting midway through someone else's breakfast conversations and by means of bidding a friend goodbye. His lips had the taste of liquor, cigarettes and a hard candy. Small hands but easily overpowering Yukhei.

When the bottle of martini crashed against the floor, deliberately dropped by Mark, Yukhei flickered the light on to see where it landed, and just as he was about to look, Mark reached for his crotch, squeezing it, then swallowing Yukhei's surprised moan during a kiss, then beginning to grind against Yukhei's thigh.

"I was thinking about it the whole evening," he whispered, as if it was something Yukhei wouldn't be able to figure out himself.

Mark was standing on his toes now, his hot breaths reaching up and clouding Yukhei's horn-rimmed glasses.

"And I thought you were listening to the lecture," Yukhei replied, between the kisses, his voice hoarse with the wave of arousal he wasn't prepared for. He swept Mark's body closer, Mark's hips stuttering against Yukhei's growing erection. "It was very interesting."

"I couldn't focus," Mark replied, his eyes closed now. Leading the sloppy kisses down Yukhei's jawline and neck, he giggled drunkenly, as if he'd just thought of something funny and wouldn't tell Yukhei even if he was asked to. Then, there was a wet sound of his tongue licking Yukhei's skin. "Can you come in my mouth?"

A command disguised as a proposition.

Yukhei didn't have the time to reply. Mark's knees hit the floor and his hands expertly unzipped Yukhei's trousers in a span of just a few seconds, like he was challenging himself to do it as fast as he could, Yukhei's hard cock springing out his underwear right in front of Mark's face. And then Mark was at it, dragging his tongue up the underside. In the dimly lit corridor, his eyelashes casted long shadows down his cheeks.

Yukhei's hands found their way to Mark's hair, not yet pulling, rather petting Mark's head, running fingers through the soft strands the way he knew Mark liked it.

Mark moaned. He sucked at the very tip of Yukhei's cock, licked along the slit, then took it all in, in one go. The man's cheeks hollowing so obscenely and tongue working so skilfully, Yukhei found himself struggling not to buck into Mark's mouth. Mark's nose in his pubic hair, the head of Yukhei's cock slowly slid into the narrow space of Mark's throat.

Just then, Mark's eyes fluttered open. He glanced up through his eyelashes, waiting, fishing for a reaction, and the look of his eyes, big and bright, seemingly innocent and yet so commanding, it all made Yukhei way too close to his release. And he surely didn't want to come just yet.

"You know that you've wasted half a bottle of perfectly fine martini?" he asked, his voice breathless.

Mark had to take the cock out of his mouth to respond. "I know for a fact that Jaemin's hiding three more bottles under his bed," he revealed, sounding proud of himself, his lips shiny with precome.

"You want to keep drinking? Don't you have any classes in the morning?"

"Not talking about the classes now."

Yukhei's hand stirred in Mark's hair. He was mindlessly weaving the strands between his fingers, then a moment later tucking it all neatly behind Mark's ear. "You look beautiful like this," Yukhei said, weirdly thoughtful to his own ears, voice lowered.

Mark licked his lips. His one hand was cupping Yukhei's balls, the other holding onto Yukhei's thigh. "You should draw me like this. With your dick in my mouth."

"I wouldn't be able to draw then."

"With someone else's dick in my mouth."

Yukhei hissed, momentarily angered but also sensing an embarrassing rush of adrenaline. His jaw tightened. "Do you ever leave some things unsaid?"

Mark tipped his head up for a better look into Yukhei's eyes. They kept silent for a few moments, and Yukhei could swear that there was something visible on Mark's face, waiting to be picked up on, a challenge, a secret, a mission, which Yukhei was so close to understanding, just about to respond to it, ask a question and demand a reply, but Mark's mouth clamped back around his cock, throwing all the thoughts out of Yukhei's head.

Three orgasms and two bottles of scotch later, they were lying in bed, a single bedside lamp shining onto Mark's small figure spread against the sheets, legs still open but hands holding a book above his face, reading intently something that seemed to be much more important than Yukhei preparing their late dinner. At four am, the rest of the tenants came back.

Another thing Yukhei had noticed over the course of those few months he had shared with Mark was how often the man acted flirtatiously with no regard to who he spoke to, what the circumstance was and whether or not Yukhei could see it. Consciously or not, in a blink of an eyelid, his pose would switch, gaining a sensual roundness to it. At the same time, his voice would slow down, take on a new, sweeter note which made the words almost purr from between his lips.

Leaning against the table and looking in Mark's direction, at Mark's figure flirting with the barman, Johnny would often repeat, "He's the kind of guy all literary fags want to write their poems about." Then, he would turn to Yukhei. "Or paint in their paintings."

And at the end of the flirt, Mark would usually get a discount, or a free drink. Sometimes a whole round. At many parties, drunk in the middle of the dance floor, bodies swinging to the jazz melodies, Mark would smile to a stranger and get closer to him. They would kiss, the stranger's hands running through Mark's hair and Mark's hands running down the stranger's back, and then Mark would simply depart. Midway through the dance and groping, he would slip a packet of cigarettes out of the man's pocket and bring it to the table, a token of victory he would be particularly delighted about.

There were times he would direct a sultry look at one of his friends. A whole group seated at the table, Mark's hand would land on Johnny's knee, squeezing it meaningfully, perhaps running a bit higher, almost touching the man's crotch. Then, not getting any response, he would lose interest.

There was a game he liked playing, with Kai mostly. One man would drop a quote and the other would be quick to continue.

" _I'm Nobody. Who are you?_ " Kai started, that night in the bar.

Mark's eyes shone up at the sound of the challenge, an instantaneous reaction. He leaned in and stared at Kai, licking his lips before responding. " _Are you--nobody--too?_ "

A smile spread over Kai's pair of pillowy lips, the colour of rip plums in the dim light of the bar. He forced Mark to wait, just a little bit, before continuing. " _Then there's a pair of us_."

" _Don't tell! They'd banish us--you know_!" And the end of the words, a laugh broke from Mark's lips, impossible to tame.

They would continue the game as they walked to get more drinks at the bar, their steps wobbly and arms intertwined, as if every limb was in its perfect position, familiar and well-trained.

In moments like those, Yukhei would ask questions the remaining part of the group.

"Isn't he much older than the rest of you?" Yukhei started, clearly meaning Kai, from whose back Yukhei's stare had just been detached.

Johnny crushed his cigarette in the ashtray, immediately bringing out another one. "He's actually my age."

"How did you first meet?"

Not replying immediately, Johnny took his time to take the first drag on his new cigarette. The cloudlet of smoke made in the process soared up his face and over his head. "Through poetry," he replied. "He was my first editor. Published my poems in his magazine before anyone else would. I owe him part of my career."

Chaeyoung chimed in. She looked drunk and very amused, having just finished a long and wet kiss with a new addition to the group, an upcoming novelist. "Have you heard that story," she began, "about Kai's wife?"

Yukhei replied that he hadn't.

"She worked in the theatre," Chaeyoung proceeded to reveal, "and she died during her performance."

"It was an accident," Johnny supplied, in the silence that followed Chaeyong's words. "Ophelia was supposed to shoot herself in act four. You know, instead of falling off the branch of a willow tree and drowning herself. A more direct interpretation. Turned out that the gun was loaded. She died on the spot."

In May, Yukhei was working at a telegraph company, the low-paid job offer found courtesy of his flatmate, Kunhang, with whom at that time he was sharing a two-room loft over a truck garage. Kunhang's father was an anthropologist and the flat was filled with ethnic musical instruments of unknown to both of them origins. Every day rotating around Mark, going wherever Mark was going, meeting with the people Mark was meeting and attending the events Mark wished to attend, Yukhei rarely spent time at his own place. Coming back from work, his feet would always carry him to Mark's flat and then follow Mark's steps someplace else.

This afternoon it was the café a short walk from the modern art gallery. Yukhei and Jaemin on one side of the table, on the other Johnny and Kai, in the middle between them: Mark. The topic of the conversation was imagism and the jukebox played _You Always Hurt the One You Love_.

As Mark and Johnny continued exchanging their views on the imagist manifesto, Kai crossed his arms against the table, flickering the ashes of his cigarette into the glass ashtray. "Abstract painters usually hang around there," he told Yukhei. "It's their favourite spot."

Yukhei responded that he didn't know. Something he had noticed, now having met Kai and Mark many times, was the way Kai's eyes seemed to be unconsciously drifting towards Mark. How he watched the man speak, his lips curving into an enchanted smile. And Yukhei couldn't deny that it made him feel jealous.

"I've been told that you haven't chosen your path yet," Kai continued, his body now leaning towards Yukhei. "Which you should. I've seen your sketches. You're good at it."

"Thanks."

"I love helping artistic virgins. That's what I do." He slipped a piece of paper out of the pocket of his jacket and slid it on the table towards Yukhei.

"What's that?"

"If you're in need of money," Kai said. The piece of paper was an announcement cut out of a newspaper. Kai's ringed finger pointed at the title. "Fashion magazine. They're looking for someone to sketch a few pairs of shoes for an article. You could try that as a starter."

Yukhei felt his eyebrows move downward, in a sharp wave of suspicion. The music on the jukebox sounded the opposite: calm, cotton-candy mellow. _If I broke your heart last night, it's because I love you most of all._

Yukhei considered the proposition for a longer while, not yet talking the piece of paper, not to commit himself to anything, and Kai didn't hurry him. And then, both of them stirred as Mark's voice was suddenly raised. "Go fuck yourselves, you philistines!" he yelled. At which words all three men, Johnny, Jaemin and Mark himself, bursted into laughter.

And so a few days later Yukhei delivered a set of drawings to the artistic director of the magazine. And they got accepted, published in the newest volume, under the article, "Stepping Down the Path of Success". That was the beginning.

In June, he drew and painted a few more illustrations and then, recommended by the artistic director, got a job painting backdrops for a department store. First time he could speak of having money of his own, not borrowing it from Kunhang.

The rest of the month passed in a blissful tempo of the sweaty nights spent in bars and the feverish lectures held at Kai's house. Sketching Mark's silhouette dancing with Johnny, in the weak light of a single lamp, glasses sliding down Yukhei's nose. Stacking the growing collection of Mark sketches under his bed, aware of the curious gaze of Kunhang. Watching Kai whisper into Mark's ears as they walked as a group down the bridge, laughing and throwing empty bottles of pernod into the river just to hear the sound of water slapping. Kissing Mark in the upstairs bathroom of Kai's house, then having sex pressed against the bathroom door. Drawing mermaid dresses for the magazine.

Fast forward to one of the evenings in Kai's living room.

"Cold your mind slow down--twinges of delight--smoke is all," Kai's voice was booming in all the rooms of the house, manuscript in his hands from which he was reading, just as Mark grasped Yukhei's arm, leading him outside. "The wounded galaxies melt down the eyelids of the row of them--as I watch you depart--smudges motionless air--if I knew I would be good enough--wind hand in the undersea swallowing."

"Why are we leaving?" Yukhei asked, the moment Mark opened the front door to let them out.

"Let's have a walk instead?"

The same sequence as usual: Yukhei reflexively took a packet of cigarettes out of his cotton shirt, Mark grabbed one out, Yukhei lit it up. Perfect synchronisation, almost breaking the record of speed. Then they kissed, sharing the smoke.

"How's the new job?" Mark asked him. They walked down the pavement by a row of luxurious cars in which Mark watched his own reflections, instinctively fixing his hair. "I've heard you're making actual money now."

Turning his head away, Yukhei smiled timidly. "It's going alright."

"Kai has many connections out there."

"I'm thankful to him."

"Like everyone is." Mark's voice came out sharp this time, unexpectedly.

For several moments they didn't speak. Yukhei watched the full moon hanging from the sky. Then, after a reflection, he asked, "You don't like it because I'm too busy now?"

Mark sniggered. "I'm glad you're busy. I'm getting tired of that handsome face of yours."

Yukhei let out a loud laugh. "Same about you." He calculated the time in his head, then pointed out, "We've been seeing each other for half a year now. How does it feel?" He took Mark's hand and squeezed softly. Mark passed him the cigarette.

As they walked under a street lamp, Mark's face got lit up and Yukhei saw the frown it exhibited. "That's a long time," Mark's thin, chapped lips commented.

Yukhei didn't think anything of it. Suddenly feeling the warmth bursting in his chest, he took a deep breath, enjoying the evening air. "And yet I still don't know many things about you."

"Is this the part where you ask me questions?"

"Which you never answer?" Yukhei pretended to hesitate. "I guess so?"

"Shoot."

"I feel like I always learn everything second-hand about you. Because no matter how much you speak, and you speak a lot, don't get me wrong," Mark laughed at the comment, "I don't hear much about you. The private person. Not the artistic personality." Mark's frown deepened. "Don't make a face like this."

They walked in silence for a while, Yukhei consciously giving Mark the time to consider his request. They lit up two more cigarettes, smoked them partially, then stopped on the bridge, Mark's arms crossed against the metal railing.

"So you want me to tell you things. Fine." Mark made a pause. He wasn't looking at Yukhei. He propped his chin against his crossed arms, one hand still holding the smoking cigarette. "I can tell you something I don't tell everyone."

Yukhei leaned against the railing with his bottom. The warm wind combed his hair. He waited.

"I haven't seen my mother in years," Mark confessed then, his voice taking on a tone which Yukhei hadn't ever heard before, apologetic the way Yukhei hadn't expected Mark to be able to feel. "She's in a mental institution. Thinks the government has installed wires in her brain."

There was a jazz band playing in one of the restaurants on the other side of the river. Couples walked on the bridge beside them.

"I don't know what to say."

"Diagnosed with psychosis." Mark's speech had an air of choosing words carefully, yet at the same time, it started sounding drained of feelings, indifferent. "My stepfather couldn't deal with it so he sent her away. And then found himself a new woman as a replacement." A look of hurt passed over his face, making his usually defiant face seem soft and vulnerable. "So I run from home."

Yukhei was quick to put the pieces together. "And you met Kai?"

Mark took a moment to reply, inhaling deeply and letting the smoke out. "I found a home where everyone was just as lost and problematic as I felt." Pause. "Any more questions?"

Yukehi shook his head no.

"There are some decisions that once you've made them, you can never take a step back," Mark whispered, in a clear monotone. "And there are some things that once you've loved them, they forever stay yours."

"Whose quotation is that?"

"Nobody's. I'm just thinking to myself."

They continued walking.

With the amount of money Yukhei managed to collect working in the display department and receiving small drawing commissions, the idea appeared of him going to college, thrown by a few people on a few occasions.

One of them was Kunhang. Manoeuvring through their living room that was full of ethnic instruments and primal arts masks, all looking at Yukhei with the hollows empty of eyes, Kunhang said, "Seems like something came out of this relationship you're having." He meant Mark. The two of them had met one time, which Yukhei still thought to be one too many. "You seem so exuberant this year. You've found yourself a job. What if you went to college now?"

And the conversation continued in a café, with Kai instead of Kunhang, who was looking at Yukhei over their steaming glasses of espresso.

"I would say go for it," Kai said, the cigarette already occupying its rightful spot in the left corner of the man's mouth. "I know a few people in the Fine Arts department. Painting and design?"

"Design." Mark was quick to snigger with disdain. He had just appeared at the table out of thin air, breathing shallowly after dancing with a stranger, who, as Yukhei had noticed, groped Mark's buttocks and had sucked a hickey on his clavicle. "Marrying fine art and commercial art is a blasphemy. Almost prostitution."

Kai sighed loudly, visibly growing irritated with Mark's sudden interruption. He looked at Mark who had now dropped heavily on the seat beside Yukhei, quickly hanging his arm around Yukhei's shoulders and kissing his neck. Yukhei remained motionless.

"I'm trying to help Yukhei's career," Kai explained in a crisp tone. "Help him find a stable financial source. Something you'll never have."

Mark unglued his lips from Yukhei's neck, body suddenly tensing for a confrontation. Strands of his black hair were glued to his forehead, eyebrows furrowed. "What if I tell you I already have one?"

Not interfering, Yukhei watched the two men exchange hostile stares. It lasted for a few moments, till the end of the jukebox song when Kai looked away, admitting his defeat.

"Come dance with me," Mark proposed then, standing up and taking Kai's hand. They departed.

Yukhei only bumped into them two hours later, walking down the staircase where couples were sucking each other's faces, bodies propped against the wooden railing and the wallpaper, everyone smoking and whispering. He had spent the time discussing Johnny's drunk plan for a grand novel, big like all the classics, admiring the sea and bringing up Dedalus and Raskolnikov every second sentence.

Yukhei was now tipsy himself, feeling how with his every move the world slightly stirred in its frames, colours escaping their contours. He fixed his glasses, pushing them up his nose, and just as he was doing so, he spotted Mark's silhouette, which he would recognise everywhere and at any time.

The man was hurriedly crossing the corridor, Kai following him just as quick until his hand snatched Mark's arm, grabbing him almost violently and making him turn around.

Even from the distance and over the general buzz and jazz, Yukhei could make out the words Mark blurted out in reaction, his face almost red with fury, "Can't you leave me for a goddamned second?" Then came a slap in the face. Kai released his grip, hand rushing to touch his hurt cheek instead. He lost control for a second and that was enough time for Mark to disappear.

When Yukhei came up close, it was only the two of them left.

"What's going on?" he asked Kai. Only as the words rushed out of his mouth and he could hear them being spoken out, he realised just how agitated and angered he felt. He sounded accusatory and Kai didn't like it.

"Now you come bark at me too?" Kai replied gruffly, hurt pride seeping into his voice. He was no longer holding his hand pressed to his cheek, instead rushing to light up a cigarette, a weirdly defensive gesture. "Don't you even have an inkling of what everyone else seems to be perfectly aware of?"

Yukhei didn't understand.

"Talk to your Angel Boy," Kai spat out, a contemptuous glow present in his eyes, which Yukhei immediately felt himself to be the addressee of. "I think he's hiding something from you. He's playing against the rules."

He confronted Mark the following day, just after applying for college. He climbed up the staircase and walked into the flat, the door open as usual, gramophone playing inside and cigarette smoke blurring the vision. Seeing Yukhei enter the room, Jaemin quickly gathered his benzedrine inhalers and walked out, throwing a rushed greeting and patting Yukhei on the shoulder before closing the door.

Like enclosed in a romantic portrait, Mark was seated on the windowsill, his hands gripping on a copy of someone's manuscript, and behind him brick buildings and dirty greyish skies. He didn't lift his gaze at Yukhei, even though his body stirred at the sound of Yukhei approaching.

"I've applied," Yukhei informed him.

"Should I congratulate you?" was Mark's response, thrown indifferently in the direction of the manuscript, as if the words weren't directed specifically at Yukhei.

"I have the money so I decided to do it," Yukhei continued. "Which makes me wonder. How do you pay your tuition?"

Mark's eyebrows furrowed. "Maybe I have a scholarship," he suggested, without thinking.

"You don't. You can't be bothered to write a paper. I haven't seen you go to a class ever since I've met you." Yukhei came to a halt before the windowsill, with one hand leaning against the wall and towards Mark. "I don't think you even want to be in college."

And those words, plus the tone in which Yukhei pronounced them, crossed the line. Mark dropped the manuscript to the floor. On the front page Yukhei could see Kai's pseudonym.

"You really have to, right?" Mark's eyes finally shot up to Yukhei's. Irritated. "Launching your investigation into me now, are you? You want to know everything about me too? So you can control me? Just like him?"

"Like who?"

Mark released a sardonic laugh.

"Like Kai. He's the one paying the tuition. I told him I don't need it. I'm going to drop out anyway." He quickly slid off the windowsill, momentarily losing balance. Then, he stormed out into the kitchen.

Yukhei followed him.

"Why is he paying it then?" he asked, his question bumping against Mark's back, ready to be ignored. "Do you even like the guy? I've seen you two arguing last night. Would you explain it to me?"

In the kitchen, Mark took his keys and redirected his steps back to his room, then into the corridor, his body like a blurry ghost passing before Yukhei's eyes. "We're not talking here," he announced, meaning not somewhere Jaemin and other tenants could hear them. "He did it because he thought I would like it. He thought I would love analysing this decorous bullshit wrapped in rhyme and meter."

The door shut with a bang, they began descending the staircase and Yukhei could only catch up with Mark's speed because of his own long legs.

"Why would he do it?"

"Because that's what he always does. He pays for me." On his way downstairs, Mark stepped into an ashtray, pushing it down to the third floor where it broke into pieces. He didn't pay attention.

Yukhei cleared his throat, the sound echoing against the walls. "Is he... your sponsor? Is that what this whole thing is about?"

Mark sped up his gait, not allowing Yukhei to look him in the face even for a moment. They walked outside, turned right, passed by Chaeyoung and another artist they both knew, without greeting them.

"Yukhei. Drop the subject."

Down the pavement, by the café, into a narrow alley where fresh laundry was hanging above their heads, stretched on strings from window to window. Mark's blurry silhouette, in constant movement, hands slipped into the pockets of his cotton trousers, it all looked unfamiliar. He was lacking a cigarette in his mouth and a defiant expression on his face which would challenge the whole world, tell it to fuck off, lacking a coquettish smile that would play around his lips, directed at everyone and nobody at the same time.

"So is he?" Yukhei pressured. "Does he pay your rent and tuition in exchange for sex?"

Mark laughed again, the opposite of amusement audible in the sound. Then, finally, he stopped walking. Yukhei almost bumped into him. "Why do you care?" he asked Yukhei.

They were now in a park, surrounded from each side by old brick buildings in various stages of dilapidation, an arm's length of a distance dividing their faces.

Yukhei opened his eyes wider, then frowned. "Is this even a question?"

Mark's body leaped towards him, in just an instant prying Yukhei's mouth open and pushing his tongue inside, hands tightly gripping on Yukhei's jaw. The kiss felt like a desperate plea, but also like a form of furious punishment, bitter, sad, full of sexual frustration and begging. All those emotions intoxicating Yukhei almost immediately, he felt giddy with his own need to pull Mark closer, hug him tight and make him calm down, feel his pulse slowing and hear the sound of his breathing.

But the moment their lips parted, Mark pushed Yukhei away, hands pressing against the man's chest.

The coldness embraced Yukhei instead.

"I just care about you," he blurted out, part of his mind flabbergasted, part perfectly focused on his aim. "Talk to me."

Mark's eyes were on the ground. He shook his head no. "I can't now. I can't leave him now."

When Mark continued walking ahead of himself, such fast and confident steps yet leading nowhere, Yukhei didn't follow.

He came to Kai's place the day after, where people were scattered around the rooms just as usual, eating breakfast, reading poetry, drinking coffee, despite no party being held and no lecture about to be conducted. They seemed to be temporarily staying in the house, some of them wearing only pyjamas or underwear, on their lazy way down the carpeted staircase or already seated over the antique armchairs. Two easels stood in the sitting room where the windows weren't hidden behind the brocaded draperies and on the canvasses: geometrical trains in motion or maybe blurry shapes splattered at random. What played on the gramophone Yukhei recognised to be a recording of Brahms's Double Concerto in A Minor, Op. 102 in Violin, Cello and Orchestra. A calm afternoon. Kai's reality to which Yukhei was now realising he didn't belong after all.

Just as he was about to step on the staircase, directing his steps up to Kai's study, everything feeling blurry all of a sudden, his hands sweaty and head empty, Johnny's voice somewhere on his right, it said, "I don't think you should go there now."

Mark was already there. His voice audible in the corridor sped up Yukhei's steps. "Don't touch them! Give them back!"

He passed by two people quickly escaping the upper floor of the building. The time slowed down, or sped up, Yukhei didn't know. He needed to be there, felt his whole body being dragged closer, all resistance strangled by an urgent need of presence that seemed to be tearing him apart from the inside.

And so he did.

It was the biggest room on the upper floor: Kai's study where every wall was behind a ceiling-height bookcase and where paintings with no frames were propped against leather armchairs, books scattered on every surface, full of pieces of paper, notes written with pen and pencil. It had a balcony and the big doors leading to it where open now, the warm June wind tugging the lace curtains to the outside world.

Kai stood in this balcony door, hands holding a box full of letters, envelopes of different sizes and colours. Mark seemed to be trying to jerk the box out of his hands.

"Yukhei. Perfect time for a visit," Kai said then, and the surprise Mark must have felt hearing the words, made him let go of the edge of the box. Suddenly, he was paralysed. His big eyes, which he didn't dare raising and directing to Yukhei, looked red with tears which had long dried on his cheeks. "I thought that we needed a conversation like this. All three of us."

And then, as if expecting Mark's next move, Kai strongly gripped his arm, immobilising him. Mark hissed but didn't oppose, standing there, by Kai's side, still and with his head dropped.

"There's a lot you don't know, I'm afraid," Kai continued, voice as though during a lecture, speech long ago prepared in his head. And Yukhei didn't respond, not yet fully located within the present moment, unstuck in space, his limbs growing slack and lips clamped shut. "Mostly because Mark is a bit of a liar, if you haven't noticed." Words which Mark wouldn't allow anybody else to pronounce.

The act was dropped. None of Mark's romantic, rebellious protagonist remained in the scene. No words, no long monologues, eyes perhaps glowing like embers but not visible from where Yukhei saw them, features softened like never before, reminiscent of flowers, in the state of withering away, nose, mouth, cheeks, ears, looming out of chaos, a mask having slipped out, dust blown off in one breath out.

"First of all, I've never forced myself onto Mark, if this is what he's been implying in your conversations. And as a proof of that, I have a whole stack of letters. From him. To me." Saying that, he dropped the box.

It turned to a side and all the content spilled onto the antique Persian-looking carpet.

"It's all love letters. Erotic poems. Sent almost on a daily basis," Kai explained, his eyes fixated on Mark's face, not leaving it even for a brief instant, hand still holding tight Mark's arm. "Letters in which he said he loved me. Before he even met me. You can have a look."

Yukhei wouldn't.

The scene Yukhei registered was like an oil landscape that hadn't yet been started, that was unpainted in Yukhei's thoughts. A series of twitches of Mark's lips, a reappearing shade which fell over his forehead. Like the details in the background of a big painting which require your eye to scan through the rest beforehand. The human being to be locked in a frame and hang on a wall. Create him anew, start him from the beginning, brush him onto the canvas.

"We had been exchanging letters for over a year before he came here," Kai's voice cut through Yukhei's thoughts. "My eighteen year old inspiring poet. Too much Baudelaire, just enough Dickinson and with a pinch of Whitman."

"Let go of him," Yukhei said at last, calmly but firmly, and so Kai did. Mark's arm dropped limply to his body. He didn't budge.

"You're not the first one. Mark has slept with many men that I know. Many of my friends too. He likes having brief affairs which all end the moment he gets bored with his lovers. I'm saying that in case you thought you were the special one."

In stupor of mind, Yukhei stood there saying nothing. There must have been a script to the scene they were playing but Yukhei hadn't seen it, hadn't ever rehearsed it, now lost in the inprovisional theatre he had been forced to enter.

"I just want to make things clear. One of the two of us is being lied to, Wong Yukhei. This isn't fair."

On the stage where the audience was but also wasn't, Yukhei took a sharp breath in, according to the script or maybe against it. Maybe Mark glanced at him once, pleading, but maybe he hadn't.

"When Mark said he wanted to move out, I said sure," Kai proceeded to explain. "When Mark said he wanted to sleep with other men, I agreed. But he's never said he wanted to break up." Pause. Interlude. Then the spectacle went on. "Mark. Do you want to leave me?"

Questions and responses glued together in a collage, Yukhei had no idea how much time passed before Mark's response. "You know I don't."

"Then I think you need to tell that to your new boyfriend. Angel Boy."

In his current life, 1968, where he's a painter, but also back in his old life where he used to be Mark's lover, he feels empty.

All the unfinished sketches of Mark stacked in his studio, impossible to be put together, refusing for a Frankenstein's monster to be created out of them, in the art gallery where the guests are gathered and where Kai's figure is looming on the horizon, holding a champagne glass, pillowy lips moving, voice as lecture-like as always, as if no time had passed since their last meeting, Mark comes out of the sea, revealed out of the sunlight and foams just anew, face you can't paint down.

He stands beside Yukhei, who is the painter of all the paintings collected at the exhibition and yet untalked to, hiding himself in the corner. For a moment, neither of them speaks up, both pretending to study the painting hung ahead of them, which bears no importance to the current moment, dada spilled onto the canvas.

Then, Mark turns towards him. Yukhei has the impression of hearing the words before Mark's lips move to let them out. "I think I've missed you."

**Author's Note:**

> I hate writing endings. Also, this story should certainly have a sequel, so fingers crossed I'll write it at some point. Sorry for the pretentiousness.


End file.
